The most widespread internal combustion engines, both Otto cycle and Diesel, are provided with one or more pistons mobile axially and alternately, each inside its own cylinder provided with a combustion chamber, connected by means of a piston rod to the crank or elbow of a drive shaft.
Some decades ago, a combustion engine was also proposed in which a single rotary piston, or rotor, was disposed in a substantially cylindrical compartment, made in a stator.
In this known engine the rotary piston comprises a body having an epicycloidal profile defining a first plurality of N lobes, while the stator is provided with a second plurality of N+1 lobes. The piston is able to rotate eccentrically in the compartment of the stator, so that its N lobes interact cyclically with the N+1 lobes of the stator, in each of which a corresponding combustion chamber is made.
Two disks are also attached laterally to the rotor, and are provided with apertures able to move cyclically in correspondence with the intake and exhaust pipes to define the cycles of the engine.
This known engine, due to its low efficiency, high fuel consumption and many problems of wear, especially of the piston lobes which move cyclically into contact with those of the stator, has not been widely adopted and has been almost abandoned.
A combustion engine with rotary pistons is also known in which the compartment of the stator is substantially cylindrical and the rotor comprises two articulated parts mounted rotatable around the same axis of rotation, the latter substantially coaxial with the compartment.
In this type of known combustion engine, kinematic means are also provided able to coordinate cyclically the rotations of the two parts around the axis of rotation, so that each of them accelerates or decelerates synchronously with respect to the other, while still both rotating in the same direction and at the same average angular velocity.
Purpose of the present invention is to achieve a combustion engine which is simple, reliable, long-lasting and which has good energy performance.
The Applicant has devised, tested and embodied the combustion engine according to the present invention to overcome the shortcomings of known engines and to obtain these and other purposes and advantages.